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We haven't objected so far to the recent gaudy public "perp walks" of arrested CEOs. But now comes the ACLU to remind us that maybe everyone should.

Last week the ACLU's New York chapter sent a letter to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, which handled the handcuffs-at-dawn, media circus arrest of 78-year-old John Rigas of Adelphia Communications and is now conducting the Martha Stewart inquiry. First reported in the New York Sun, the letter urges prosecutors to leave the theatrics to Broadway.

"When a 78-year-old corporate executive, with no apparent history of violence, offers to surrender to authorities and to appear voluntarily before a court but is, instead, physically arrested and manacled and paraded before an array of photographers and television cameras, such a practice seems plainly unjustified and . . . calculated simply to cause public humiliation and embarrassment of the accused," the letter said.

We're not suggesting that anyone shed tears for the Rigas family or any other alleged corporate criminal. But neither should they be treated any worse than other accused felons, and that includes granting them the presumption of innocence. Had Mr. Rigas been, say, a superstar shooting guard for the Philadelphia 76ers with a history of violent crime, would his request to turn himself in have been granted?

Attorney General John Ashcroft has done nothing to discourage these attempts to publicly humiliate the accused, perhaps because he views the high-profile arrests as smart politics. "With each arrest, indictment and prosecution," says Mr. Ashcroft, "we send a clear, unmistakable message."

But the best way for the government to send a message is by convicting wrongdoers in fair trials based on evidence. And those trials should take place before a judge and jury, not TV cameras.

Updated August 20, 2002

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